


Holiday Traditions

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Series: Tony, T'Challa, and Their Gaggle of Children [6]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Christmas, Holidays, Humor, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: “Nothing makes you think more about American culture than dating a guy who knows absolutely nothing about American culture,” Tony tells Rhodey.He raises an eyebrow, “oh?” he asks.Tony sighs, “the other night I get home, right, and T’Challa is sitting on my couch with a light overhead shining down on him like this is some kind of weird interrogation and he says ‘explain to me the fat red man’,” he says.





	Holiday Traditions

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted Christmas fluff, decided Tony/ T'Challa would be a good pairing, and decided you know what, might as well make it part of this series too. Why? Reasons.

“Nothing makes you think more about American culture than dating a guy who knows absolutely _nothing_ about American culture,” Tony tells Rhodey.

He raises an eyebrow, “oh?” he asks.

Tony sighs, “the other night I get home, right, and T’Challa is sitting on my couch with a light overhead shining down on him like this is some kind of weird interrogation and he says ‘explain to me the fat red man’,” he says.

Thankfully Rhodey looks just as confused as Tony must have. “The fat red man?” he asks, which is exactly what Tony responded with.

“Yeah,” he says. “So obviously I was confused and T’Challa was like ‘you know, the one Americans are obsessed with’, which didn’t help. So I keep asking questions and he’s like ‘the fat man watches children when they sleep’ and ‘he has tiny men working as slave labor in the cold’ and a bunch of other shit that made no sense.”

Rhodey makes a face, “what the fuck?” he asks.

“You know what he was talking about? Fucking _Santa Claus_ but because he hadn’t really run into the concept before he had no idea how to explain it in English and the bits and pieces that he gathered from American pop culture have honestly convinced me that Santa as a concept is really goddamn creepy,” he says. There were other hints T’Challa had too, like the fat man breaking into homes while everyone slept to give children things, and, Tony’s personal favorite, he had dogs with antlers. The weird description had been due to T’Challa forgetting the English word for ‘reindeer’, which wasn’t something that normally happened but after a long flight and thinking way too hard about America’s going nuts over Christmas the word slipped his mind.

“Tiny men working as slaves in the cold?” Rhodey asks, frowning.

“Santa’s elves,” Tony explains and he watches the light go off in Rhodey’s head.

“Oh my god, the elves don’t get paid?” he asks and Tony laughs.

“Well, no one is talking about their wages if they have any, which was what led T’Challa to believe they were slaves. Weirdly happy ones. Anyways, explaining Christmas to him was… odd.” Especially because there was so much about it Tony just _knew_ and explaining it to someone with next to no concept of it had been difficult. It was hard to gauge what he did and didn’t know because everyone Tony knew just had a working knowledge of the holiday. To be fair T’Challa attempting to explain anything from his culture went just as bad because Tony had even less of a concept of Wakandan anything thanks to the language barrier. T’Challa found Tony’s clumsy attempts at describing the things he was curious about amusing to watch, which Tony felt a lot less annoyed with after the fat red man thing.

“Well, what’d you explain?” he asks.

Tony laughs because that had been fun. “Well, the general history, the connection with Christianity, elves, a little bit more of the lore behind stuff. Then he asked about some pop culture stuff, probably because he ran into Rudolph something and wanted to know why he had a red nose, which I honestly don’t know the answer to. I explained the story anyways and he was offended at Santa’s letting the other reindeer make fun of Rudolph and treat him badly until he was useful to them,” he says. In general T’Challa didn’t appear to have a high opinion of Santa but to be fair if Tony’s first introduction to the man was him keeping slaves, breaking into houses to leave children gifts while they slept with sketchy motivations, and allowing bullying to continue until the bullied kid proved useful to him he wouldn’t be impressed either.

Rhodey laughs, “oh my _god_. I’m mad I missed this because it sounds hilarious,” he says then frowns. “Wait, I thought he went to school in Europe, wouldn’t he knew about this stuff?”

“Apparently he mostly ignored all the holidays because they weren’t relevant to him. Also he spent a brief time in the Netherlands and ran into some of those Black Pete things so uh, he decided whatever the holiday was it wasn’t worth learning about.” Rhodey considers this for a moment and nods, probably far more empathetic of T’Challa’s choice than Tony ever could be though his reasoning made sense to him too.

“Well, can’t blame him for that…” Rhodey says. “Have you told your fake kids about this because they’d probably find all sorts of new joy in this.”

“Not yet, but Harley has been avoiding T’Challa since the krussy incident too so,” Tony says.

Rhodey shakes his head. “Yeah, I would avoid T’Challa too if I had to deal with the consequences of telling him what a fucking ‘krussy’ was.” That had been half the reason why Tony didn’t want to explain the term to him, how could he possibly look the man in the eye after that? So now Harley got to deal with it. Parenting- Tony is great at it.

*

“I am just saying, Santa Claus is disturbing and I am worried about Americans,” T’Challa says, waving a spatula around. He’s a surprisingly good cook considering he’s had personal chefs his whole life. Tony couldn’t cook for shit and when Rhodey’s mom had been gracious enough to offer to teach him he accidentally blew up her kitchen and that was that. No more cooking for him.

“How is Santa disturbing?” Peter asks, frowning.

T’Challa raises an eyebrow, “you believe a fat man in red breaking into your home to leave your children gifts is _normal_? And that does not even _touch_ on how disturbing watching children all year and making a list regarding their behaviors is. Or those little elves that Americans think are cute to place all over their houses to further ‘monitor’ children’s behaviors for this… Santa,” he says.

Peter and Riri exchange a look, “the elves we leave all over the house?” Riri asks.

“Elf on the Shelf,” Tony replies, already familiar with the confusion because it had taken him and T’Challa a good thirty minutes to figure out what the hell he was talking about and then more time for Tony to explain. Not that Tony had a good explanation for a tradition that he now realized was kind of creepy.

“ _Oh_!,” Peter says, nodding. “I know what you mean now. Its just an elf, T’Challa.”

“An elf that exists solely to act as a form of surveillance on children while they supposedly report back to their superior. That is a very disturbing form of governing behavior of _children_ ,” T’Challa says. He considers whatever it was he was cooking- some Wakandan dish- before he pokes at it with the spatula. Tony isn’t sure if that’s important to he cooking process or not and briefly wonders why he even has a kitchen when he can’t cook.

“Oh come on, T’Challa, it’s harmless fun,” Harley says, speaking to T’Challa for the first time since the krussy incident. When T’Challa turns to look at him Harley pretends to be busy with his math textbook Tony knows he isn’t reading to avoid looking him in the eye. Tony would do the same in his place, honestly.

“Okay but hear me out,” Tony says, “literally the first lyric to _Santa Claus is Coming to Town_ is ‘you better watch out’, and it doesn’t get _better_ after that.”

Peter, Riri, and Harley all look between each other and converge on Peter’s phone as he starts Googling the lyrics. “Oh my god, that _does_ sound creepy,” Riri says when she finishes reading the lyrics.

T’Challa throws a hand in the air, “how come you believe Tony but not me? I was the one who noticed this disturbing trend of teaching children it is normal to be monitored all the time, even in safe, private places. I should get the credit,” T’Challa says in his own defense.

Harley looks around, “is no one going to say it?” he asks. “No one? _No_ one? Fine- FRIDAY,” he says.

“Yes, sir?” the AI replies.

Harley looks at the ceiling like most people did when talking to the AI. It was a weird habit Tony didn’t understand. “Thanks for proving how creepy you are, FRI. Just saying the AI watches us all the time and you don’t complain about that,” Harley points out, clearly thinking he’s clever but T’Challa obviously doesn’t agree.

“Certainly- but we have all consented to being watched by virtue of stepping into a home we know is heavily monitored. If we do not wish to be monitored we can leave- children do not seem to have this choice with the elves. Besides, does FRIDAY report to a governmental head type figure that will punish us via ostracizing us from a cultural space by not allowing us to participate in the tradition of opening presents like everyone else, or even giving us a symbol of our shame like a lump of coal? I think not,” he says and Harley shrinks in his seat, not having a response to that.

Peter snorts, “hey Tony, got any coal to hand out?” he asks, apparently deciding Tony was the metaphorical Santa in this scenario. Which he guessed made sense.

“Coal is inefficient so no,” he says.

“Also Tony does not break into people’s homes and deliver children presents. Nor does he expect some kind of bizarre tribute of milk and cookies,” T’Challa points out.

Tony rubs his temples, “Jesus American traditions are getting weirder by the second,” he mumbles.

*

“So,” T’Challa says, “the importance of this day is that it is the day before the day you all looking forward to?” he asks, clearly confused about Christmas Eve.

“Basically,” Tony tells him. All the children had headed home, Kate had made a brief appearance to give Tony a basket of muffins of all things, and T’Challa was still confused on the holiday.

He frowns, “do all American holidays have a… pre-holiday day?” he asks.

“Uh, no. You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be,” Tony says, waving a hand around.

“I am not, I am simply trying to figure out how this holiday works. Or any holiday in America. How come this is the only one where they day before it is, in its own right, a separate but related holiday day?” Goddamn Tony has never thought so hard about a holiday he hated in part because he never liked playing the happy family as a kid, but as an adult all the holidays did was remind him of his parent’s deaths. T’Challa’s curiosity at least has been a distraction from that.

“I don’t know, probably because Santa travels at night,” he says, shrugging.

“Does Santa have some kind of universal passport or something?” T’Challa asks and Tony laughs.

“He’s mythical, so no,” he says.

T’Challa frowns, “do American children not wonder why Santa can fly all around the world with no passport when they need one to fly?” he asks.

He shakes his head, “children are willing to indulge the magic of Christmas without considering the logistics. Now shush, I want to watch my favorite Christmas movie,” he says. T’Challa would probably hate it because he wasn’t fond of American action movies and after watching the badass cinematography Wakanda had he could see why. They used their cameras in totally different ways than America did. Still, Die Hard was the best Christmas movie out there and no one could convince him otherwise.

They watch enough of the movie that T’Challa must get bored because he shifts, “not every child follows the Christian faith, how to American children account for this? And what about the ones that do not celebrate Christmas, what do they do?” he asks and Tony sighs.

“I had a Jewish friend in grade school who made it her _mission_ to make sure none of the Christian kids found out Santa wasn’t real. Good for her because everyone someone was a little asshole to me I told them Santa was fake, their parents were liars, and explained how it was scientifically impossible for one man to travel to every single home in the world to deliver presents to kids. And that a huge chunk of the world didn’t even celebrate the holiday.” She had been horrified with Tony’s behavior but Tony didn’t much care for being bullied for being young in a class of older kids so he let loose.

T’Challa throws back his head and laughs, “that is _so_ petty! So there are American children that know that Santa is fake and they simply don’t tell the children who believe?” he asks.

“Basically,” Tony says.

“They are nicer than the children in Wakanda. There are a couple of cultural groups that do not get along and they do not hesitate to tell each other their cultural traditions are absurd,” he says.

Tony snorts, “nah, that sounds more like what would pass for racism here. Plenty of kids are rude about religion and culture, but Christmas is so ingrained into the culture that it’s way easier to insult people for _not_ celebrating it than celebrating it.” If it weren’t for his parents, and later the media, he never would have bothered with the holiday. Now he had forty-two kids that weren’t even his to consider, and of course T’Challa, who obviously didn’t celebrate the holiday.

T’Challa considers his words for a moment, “then why are your politicians yelling about a war on Christmas? As someone with an outsider’s perspective when I first heard the term I thought _Christmas_ was taking over, not that something was taking over Christmas. Signs of the holiday are absolutely _everywhere_ ,” he points out. “Wait, what exactly _is_ supposed to be warring with Christmas?” he asks.

The fuck if Tony knew, but as an atheist he found the whole thing absurd. That was probably due to his hyperawareness of all things related to religion though, even if Christmas had a certain disconnect with its religious origins as of late. “Uh, political correctness I guess. So like saying ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘merry Christmas’ and stuff. I think. To be honest I don’t know because there’s no evidence Christmas is dying if the continued existence of Santa Claus parades, Christmas trees, Christmas decorations, Christmas commercials, and Christmas everything else is any indication but you know. What do I know, I hate the holiday.”

“Happy holidays? Is that not the same thing, just without the actual holiday in the name?” T’Challa asks.

“To people who are outspoken about it? No. Its Christmas or bust for them,” he says.

“But Christmas is everywhere, what does a measly couple of words have against the continued existence of an extremely culturally entrenched holiday tradition?” he asks. Good fucking question but Tony had no real answer.

“Go ask a politician,” Tony tells him.

T’Challa makes an irritated face, “I would rather not. Personally it seems absurd to me that the war is supposedly on _Christmas_ when the real war was on every other holiday that happens around this time. Christmas won,” he says and Tony snorts and starts laughing.

“ _Please_ say that in public,” he says. T’Challa gives him a suspicious glance, which means that sentence would never be uttered in public but Tony could hope.

“What even is this nonsense?” T’Challa asks, pointing to the screen.

Tony makes an offended noise, “the best Christmas movie ever made!” he says in Die Hard’s defense.

T’Challa shakes his head. “Americans need to be exposed to Wakandan media, we have _so_ much to teach you about holiday movies,” he says, giving the screen a forlorn look.

He raises an eyebrow, “Wakanda has a holiday around this time?” he asks, surprised that T’Challa would be out of the country for it. Wakanda certainly wouldn’t react well to _that_.

“This time? Technically no, our holiday is in the New Year but our calendar is slightly different than yours so our celebrations are in two weeks. But I knew that America had some kind of big celebration around this time so I thought you might like the company,” he says and didn’t that just warm Tony’s cold, dead heart.

“You braved Christmas in America to spend time with me?” he asks, touched.

“Of course. Wakanda and America are nothing alike, but spending time with those you love on important holidays is something we share. I suppose I should be glad I did not miss it. For some reason I thought Christmas and New Years were the same day,” he says. “To be honest I probably should have paid more attention but these decorations have been around for nearly two months- I assumed it was some kind of extended celebration that led to the end of the year.”

Tony laughs, but understands the confusion given that T’Challa obviously hadn’t looked the holiday up. And the decorations actually showed up mid-October so his confusion made sense, especially when things kicked up in November and again in December. To someone who didn’t know, and likely didn’t actually have the time to research, that’s exactly what it looked like.

“Thanks. I hate Christmas actually, so this is nice,” Tony says softly.

It takes T’Challa a minute but he winces, “your parents died only days before a major holiday. That couldn’t have been pleasant. I know how you feel, sort of, though. This will be the first time I celebrate the New Year without my father.”

Ouch. Tony hadn’t considered that and firsts were always the worst, at least provided they were far enough ahead of the date your parents died. His first Christmas without his parents was a drunken blur in Rhodey’s mom’s basement, but his second Christmas without them was worse. Probably because of all the media shit splashed around about their deaths for two weeks before the anniversary. Things didn’t really get better after that either.

“Yeah, I know a thing or two about that. I’m sure the Dora Milaje will be happy to mourn with you,” he says. They had been almost as upset about the King’s death as T’Challa was. Actually the whole of Wakanda wept for the king, which was just odd to Tony. Half of America was secretly rooting for someone to assassinate their current president so he doubted anyone would cry if he dropped dead. “So what _does_ the holiday represent?” he asks, curious.

T’Challa smiles sadly, “a rebirth- one that will be particularly significant given that there is a new king, and a new political structure as we move back into world politics. I’m not certain the country has ever celebrated the holiday with so many relevant sociopolitical happenings to really represent that this _is_ a new year, and a new age for the country. I am hoping that I do not mess things up. Managing to screw up a remembrance for the passed king is _not_ what I want my legacy to be, nor do I want to disrespect my father that way.”

Why he was worried Tony didn’t know. Aside from his initial outburst of anger, and even that was executed with fine-tuned finesse- T’Challa handled everything with a shocking amount of grace, ability, and efficiency. Tony squeezes his thigh, “T’Challa, I’ve known you for some time now and I honestly don’t think you could screw this up if you tried. You’ve already done plenty to honor his memory- he’d be proud.”

*

Tony laughs at the picture circulating Twitter of T’Challa looking confused with a Santa hat on holding the ugliest chocolate Santa Tony has ever seen, courtesy of Kate and Harley’s research, Peter’s money, and Riri travelling to picking up the ugly monstrosity.

“That is a meme now,” T’Challa says and Tony grins.

“I know, it’s _hilarious_ ,” he says. People liked using it as a reaction image to basically anything they didn’t like and sometimes stuck badly photoshopped images of said things over the Santa T’Challa was holding. The one Tony was currently looking at was T’Challa holding a fake DVD cover that said ‘another boring, heterosexual romance’- retweeted by Peter, who got it from Ned, who got it from Riri, who appears to have gotten it from Kate though Tony could have gone his whole life without reading her Twitter handle.

“No, no, not here. Well also here, but Wakanda has made it a meme too. I cannot believe this, but it seems like Wakanda is becoming more open minded to participating in the world because… well they like American memes. I am the King of a nation that is only accepting the idea of opening itself up to the world for _memes_ ,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

For a moment Tony doesn’t know how to react to that so he throws his head back and laughs because that was probably one of the most absurd things he has ever heard in his life, except maybe Steve’s increasingly weird line of questioning of Riri. They both knew he knew it wasn’t Tony in the suit, but thus far he’s only remained suspicious and Tony was grateful for that. He ignores that for now though because the notion of a nation only accepting its place in world politics for _memes_ was too good to pass up.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)


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